My daughter was 18 months old when it all became too much. I had reached breaking point. I was working relentless hours as a copywriter, doing a hair-raising commuter dash day in and day out, and all for next to nothing. My childcare costs were the equivalent of a second mortgage.

After forking out these fees, I was left with was £4.50 in net earnings for my efforts. It didn’t add up: how could I be working all of these hours and running myself ragged for a measly £4.50 a month? And this didn’t even account for the fines. For every minute past 5.30pm that I arrived for my daughter, we were fined £1 – it was an endless cycle of running from pillar to post… and for what?

The concept of working was becoming utterly pointless. I was on the verge of paying to be able to go to work, which made no sense at all. A new study from Pregnant Then Screwed this year has shown just how magnified this problem has become today, with a frightening 75% of mothers who pay for childcare saying that it no longer makes financial sense for them to work, and one in 10 mums saying that childcare is now costing the same or more than their take-home pay. This was the situation I found myself in, and everything started to crumble.

“What do mums really want for Mother’s Day? Easy – we just want affordable childcare”